In last year’s Total Retail report, I referred to the high bar that participants in PwC’s global online shopper survey had set for retailers worldwide, in the 12 months since, that bar has been raised higher still�" but customer expectations are really just part of the story for retailers in 2015.

In fact, the environment for retailers has never been more complex. In this year’s report, we have reinforced our consumer research with interviews of retailers around the world.

As online shopping continues to grow at the expense of store visits, the premium in the future will be on creating unique, brand-defining experiences that keep customers coming back�"whatever the channel.

Our analysis, both of our survey data and interviews, keeps bringing us back to four waves of disruption facing every retailer, regardless of where they operate: the evolving role of the store, the proliferation of social networks, mobile phone technology, and global demographic shifts.

An expanded and deepened survey

Our global consumer survey now covers more than 19,000 respondents in 19 territories on six continents. The more we expand and deepen this annual assessment, the more effective it becomes in analyzing and evaluating the international retail landscape.

Some of the results from this year’s survey echo a fundamental principle from last year: namely, that achieving “total retail” demands thinking beyond channels.

The more shoppers we canvass in country after country�"and the more thoroughly we poll them about their consumer habits, preferences, and expectations for a better shopping experience�"the more obvious it is that consumers are developing their own approach to researching and purchasing, both online and in-store.

They want their shopping needs met in a way that minimizes uncertainty and inflexibility and maximizes efficiency, convenience, and pleasure.

Four disruptive forces

This year’s report expands on this total retail discussion and delves into four retail disruptors. Our first disruptor, the evolution of the store, can be thought of more as a business model evolution.

Our second and third disruptors�"mobile techology and social networks�"are technological. A fourth�"demographic shifts�"is more socio-economic.

Our first disruptor is centered on an institution as old as modern shopping itself: the store. It’s certainly true that the physical store remains the retail touch point with the highest frequency. More than one in three (36%) of our global sample goes to a physical store at least weekly. That is a significant difference compared to how often they shop weekly online via PC (20%), online via tablet (10%), and online via mobile phone (11%). 

But as online shopping continues to grow at the expense of store visits, the premium in the future will be on creating unique, brand-defining (be it offering sheer convenience or an offer that excites and engages) that keep customers coming back. 

A case in point is Turkey’s Migros, a leading supermarket chain. The company’s CEO, O. Ozgur Tort, explained to PwC in an interview how Migros’s inventive channel approach uses kiosks to sell online to customers in-store. According to Tort, “The aim is to push e-commerce sales to customers who are already physically shopping in the store, by making them offers for products that are not in the physical inventory of the store.”

As my PwC colleague and the leader of our U.S. Retail & Consumer Practice, Steve Barr, puts it: “From in-store design studios and personal shopping assistants to coffee and tea ateliers, retailers are offering a comprehensive experience, evolving into something sleeker, more customized and increasingly attuned to shoppers’ expectations of what the in-store experience should be.”

It is still very early days for the transformative effects that both mobile and social networks will have on retail. 

This year’s Thanksgiving shopping weekend was profoundly altered by mobile phones. The Financial Times reported in December that mobile sales on Cyber Monday following Thanksgiving 2014
“increased by a whopping 29.3 percent, to account for one in five transactions” online.

A few days earlier, the New York Times, citing IBM data, had also reported significant spikes in purchases by mobile phone on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday: “Sales from mobile devices jumped over 25 percent on both days….People logging onto shopping sites from their smartphones or tablets accounted for over half of all online traffic on Thursday, and almost half of traffic on Friday.”

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